MLB notebook: Owners want to hold off on playoff expansion

Baseball players want owners to hold off on approving a detailed plan for how to expand the playoffs until after the sides can negotiate over the addition of two more wild-card teams.

PADRES AGREE TO DEAL WITH DENORFIA: The San Diego Padres have agreed to a one-year contract with outfielder Chris Denorfia.

Denorfia, signed as a minor league free agent last offseason, played in 99 games for the Padres in 2010. He hit .271 with nine homers and 36 RBIs. He made 72 starts, including 44 in center field, 15 in left and 13 in right.

Over parts of five major league seasons with Cincinnati, Oakland and the Padres, he has a .274 average with 12 homers and 55 RBIs.

San Diego announced the deal on Wednesday.

NEW 'SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL' TEAM FORMED:Orel Hershiser, Bobby Valentine and Dan Shulman will form the new announcing team for "Sunday Night Baseball," ESPN announced Wednesday.

The network said last month that Jon Miller and Joe Morgan would not return for a 22nd season.

Hershiser, the 1988 NL Cy Young Award winner, joined the booth as a third announcer last season.

Valentine, the former Mets and Rangers manager, became a studio analyst for ESPN last year. He managed the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan's Pacific League from 2004-09. He said he had opportunities to return to managing this offseason but preferred to stay at ESPN.

Hershiser played for Valentine with the Mets in 1999.

Shulman has served as a regular play-by-play voice for baseball games on ESPN since 2002. He also calls college basketball with Dick Vitale.

MLB RELEASES DRUG REPORT: Major League Baseball granted 105 exemptions for otherwise-banned stimulants in the last year because of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, virtually unchanged from the previous year's total.

MLB and the players' union released the report Wednesday, covering a period that ended with the World Series.

The ADHD figure has stayed about the same for four years. There were 108 therapeutic use exemptions in 2009, up from 106 TUEs in 2008 and 103 in 2007. Baseball management says the level of ADHD among young males is higher than for the general population.

"My reaction is the same as last year and the year before that," said Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the committee that determines the banned substances list for the World Anti-Doping Agency. "It seems to me almost incomprehensible that ADHD is so pervasive in baseball to a degree that it requires medicine."

A frequent critic of baseball's drug-testing program, Wadler said "these numbers really cry out for transparency in the TUE process in baseball — a good look-see at the process, not just the numbers."

Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president for labor relations, said MLB was encouraged "by the low number of positive" tests. "We're always cautious that we're not missing anything."

Manfred emphasized the standards were determined by Smith, not MLB.

There were just two positive tests for steroids in the second full year of the sport's toughened drug program, according to Dr. Bryan Smith, MLB's independent drug-testing administrator. Cincinnati pitcher Edinson Volquez and Florida catcher Ronny Paulino were suspended for 50 games each.

Without saying who tested positive for what, Smith identified the substances as Clomiphene and Oxandrolone.

Among 3,747 tests for major leaguers, up slightly from last year's 3,722, there were 15 positives for stimulants, including 13 for Adderall and one each for Clobenzorex and Phentermine. They were presumably initial positive tests, which don't result in discipline.

ADHD dominated the therapeutic use exemptions that were granted, with only five others approved. Of those, two were for hypertension and one each for hypogonadism, narcolepsy and post-concussion syndrome.

Smith issued the report under toughened rules baseball adopted last year at the recommendation of former Senate majority leader George Mitchell.